You know what really grinds my e-mail gears?

Today I received an e-mail that was both flagged with a high importance red exclamation point and requested that I send a read receipt.  However, it turns out that the e-mail was neither “highly important” nor required urgent reading.  There are definitely a lot of e-mail manners that are violated on the interweb everyday.  Here are just a few that bother me (in what I believe to be order of severity).

Violation 8:  Assuming the person goes by a shortened name
Maybe I’m partial to this because everyone assumes that my name is “Matt” no matter how much I try to use Matthew – especially in a professional setting.  However, I try to stick to what’s listed in a digital signature unless someone offers a less formal name at the end of their message.

Violation 7: Using “Hey” in the salutation line
This one is largely personal preference, and was something that I had never thought about until I did a co-op with GE Healthcare.  The reality of starting an e-mail with “Hey ____,” is that it’s very informal.  When I e-mail my brother or someone who I go to the Karaoke Kidd at one in the morning with, it’s probably ok.  For anyone else in a professional setting, especially a superior, it’s probably inappropriate.

Violation 6:  E-mailing a co-worker sitting next door
My dad always told me growing up to never do something over the phone which can be done just as easily (and probably more effectively) in person.  I believe this is also true about my own ”e-mail generation.”  I don’t want to work in an office where face-to-face conversations are a thing of the past and when I have entire work days of only staring at my computer monitor, I’m much more fatigued than after a day of meetings with human interaction.  Receiving an e-mail from someone who sits 10 feet away asking me a yes or no question is just ridiculous.

Violation 5: Replying without my original message thread
I send and receive a lot of e-mails every day (sometimes during the school year as many as 150) and I have four different e-mail accounts IMAPed to my MS Outlook program.  Therefore, when I receive an e-mail response without my original message or an action item that I need to take care of with no thread history to provide background, it’s confusing and can be very time consuming for me to figure out what the person is talking about.

Violation 4: Accidental “Reply to all”
Check out the following thread, compliments of my classmate Scott:

—–Original Message—–
From: “Scott”
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 7:48 PM
To: “Matthew”
Subject: Re: RE: ISyE undergrad funding and valuable practical/project experience opportunity

I apparently sent this to the whole IE undergrad

—– Original Message —–
From: “Matthew”
Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2009 2:09 pm
Subject: RE: ISyE undergrad funding and valuable practical/project experience opportunity
To: “Scott”

Scott,
Did you intend to send this to me?
-Matthew

—–Original Message—–
From: “Scott”
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 12:08 PM
To: “Raj”
Cc: ieundergrad@engr.wisc.edu; “Roger”
Subject: Re: ISyE undergrad funding and valuable practical/project experience opportunity

I have a play I need to go to for acting at 730 and can work whenever that ends.

—– Original Message —–
From: “Raj”
Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2009 7:46 pm
Subject: ISyE undergrad funding and valuable practical/project experience opportunity
To: ieundergrad@engr.wisc.edu
Cc: “Raj”, “Roger”

ISyE Undergrad Student Assistants

Starting Summer 2009 and subsequent semesters (15 – 20 hours per week)

[etc…]

Oops…  Although, I appreciated that my friend Scott wanted to let me know that he was going to a play that night, I’m sure the rest of my department’s undergraduate mailing list wasn’t as interested.  The professor, “Raj” (who happens to be my boss) he was e-mailing about the job offer and ”Roger” (who happens to be my supervisor) were probably just as disinterested.

Violation 3: Angry e-mails
Tone is never portrayed well in an e-mail and in my experience sending someone an e-mail while in a heated mood almost always does more damage than good (especially in destroying future communication barriers and trust).  Using an e-mail in which caps lock is used to ”yell” at someone is also insulting.  My biggest problem with this, however, is that a co-worker wouldn’t have the decency to talk to me face-to-face about a conflict, but rather finds it necessary to e-mail you and rub it in by copying a few of your co-workers or supervisors.  This is also known as ”copying up” and one of the most ridiculous experiences I had with it came after I missed a church music rehearsal and the director decided to reprimand me with an e-mail in which our parish priest was copied.

Violation 2: Unnecessary flagging with “high importance”
An e-mail which is flagged as “highly important” (the red exclamation point) gets subconsciously sifted to my “highly unimportant” e-mail folder.  E-mail importance is in the eye of the beholder and I’ll decide which messages in my inbox make the list.

Violation 1: Read receipts
To me the single most insulting e-mail habit is sending a read receipt with a message and it causes me to instantly lose interest (or maybe respect for the sender) for whatever the e-mail was about.  To me, this informs the recipient, “I don’t think you’re responsible enough to respond to my e-mail in a timely manner so I’m going to make you feel guilty and let me know how soon you’ll take care of the issue.”  This is especially annoying when you are a part time research assistant and you check e-mail at all hours of the day.  This option can also be turned off (at the risk of your untrustworthy coworkers thinking you never read their e-mails).  The only thing worse than an e-mail with a read receipt is one that contains both a read receipt and a “high importance” flag.

…and please don’t send facebook messages which contain any importance whatsoever, unless it has to do with going to the Karaoke Kidd…

Ground ball to shortstop, look at the body on that broad, over to 1st base, two down

I’ve waited my whole life for a Brewers team to be competitive and worth routing for. When I was younger, although I always enjoyed catching games at County Stadium, maintaining interest in Milwaukee baseball started to become a chore by around July for me.  The past few years, maintaining “brewer fever” has become easier each year of college.  I’ve even been able to easily enjoy brewer games, without frustration, for entire seasons – including catching a postseason game this past fall (an opportunity I thought I wouldn’t have in my lifetime).  The change, which continues to gain momentum, was a gradual one, probably sparked, in my opinion by a shift towards leadership willing to open their wallet to compete in the central division with the Cards, Astros, and the bitch-Cubs (all three with #13, #8, & #3 payrolls in the majors – Brewers are currently #17). In Bud Selig’s credit, however, he did do a decent job in his charge to graduates at my recent graduation.  Additional dedication to winning was demonstrated in 2008 by a replacement of Ned Yost prior to the end of the Brewers best season since their last playoff birth in 1982.  Things are definitely looking up and I just enjoyed a great weekend in Minneapolis (despite a Twins sweep), for the interleague series and catching up with friends who I rarely see now that they graduated and are real people.

Despite all of the challenging seasons that Brewers fans endured throughout my childhood, however, the one constant of brilliance was always Mr. Baseball, Bob Uecker.  An unbelievable schmoozer of useless, yet extremely interesting information, because of Uecker, I occasionally go out of my way to be in my car during Brewers games, instead of watching them on TV (although I enjoy Bill Schroeder as well).  This weekend in the cities, my friend Mike shared a hilarious video of Artie Lange on Letterman sharing stories about Bob Uecker and also his friendship with Harry Caray:

This clip of Norm MacDonald sharing a Uecker story is pretty good as well.

Vas up? or Train to Auschwitz?

Some big developments for me recently.  I finshed my undergrad (who cares), I joined Twitter (for ideas too random or short for this blog), and I’ve been really into showing friends two online videos this week.  The first video is the Bruno trailor.  It looks INCREDIBLE and I think has the potential to be more ridiculous than Borat.

…that is such a Samantha thing to say. Then there’s the sequel to Dick in a Box that aired on SNL this past Saturday when JT was once again hosting…

There’s also an uncensored version which I find much funnier (because I’m immature).

Doing my part

Just so we’re clear, I became incredibly green tonight while drinking franzia.  Yes Franzia.  It turns out that Franzia is conveniently created with three of the biggest environmental buzz terms out there – “Less CO2 emissions,” “Less packaging waste,” and even a “smaller carbon footprint.”  I’m not sure what “Less wine waste” means, but they do that too.  That’s what happens when you drink franzia in a cup, instead of directly out of the sack I suppose.

Franzia going green

UW-Madison Socio-Academic Campus Zones

After ballroom dance class today, I was on my way back to the Engineering campus and ran into my roommate, Lee, who asked, “what are you doing over here?” – a very valid question actually, since I haven’t been required to go to the east side of campus for a legitimate, academic reason since sophomore year. He, although an engineer himself, was actually on his way back from Art History. The truth is, the non-engineering areas of campus do have a completely different disposition and when I venture to the east for either choir or ballroom dance, it’s like visiting an unexplored, foreign world. Without further adieu, I am proud to present my most recent result of procrastinating both work and school – The UW-Madison Socio-Academic Map: My take on how our campus actually breaks down.

Figure 1 - UW-Madison Socio-Academic Map

Nerd-Land:  Home of the College of Engineering, Computer Sciences, and Wendt Library, Nerd-Land is the dwelling place of some of the most socially inept students on campus.  In traversing the halls of Engineering, one might witness 10 people surrounding a single game of chess, an intense conversation comparing notes on respective W.O.W. (World of Warcraft) characters, or even over hear numerous jokes about μ (”mu” – the coefficient of both static and kinetic friction), all in only a few minutes.  Spend too much time in Nerd-Land and your standards for the opposite sex will drop dramatically (until an eye opening journey to the east brings you back to your senses)

Nerd-Limbo:  I believe students who spend much of their day in the orange zone to be in Nerd-Limbo – still interested in a practical, technical education but capable of holding a conversation about something other than what they got on yesterday’s Thermo Exam.  The hard sciences (not meaning difficult, but the opposite of soft), such as Physics, Chemistry, Biochem, Genetics, and also Math and Stats* find their home in Nerd-Limbo.  People who are regulars in this area of campus may even have interests that lie outside of academics.
*Grainger Hall (School of Business) appears in purple above because it is considered an overlap of the orange and blue zones.

Liberal Arts-Ville:  Venture too far to the east and your existing schemas of what is a normal classroom environment will be greatly challenged.  Students studying Social Sciences,‡ Music, Dance, Languages, and also all of the students on College Life who represent the entire demographic of our student body so well, attend class here (as needed).  College Library also falls within this zone.  Expected attire in Liberal Arts-Ville requires that all students “try” before class (sweat pants strongly discouraged).  As a result, this is where many of the campus’ best looking people, who seem to only emerge nocturnally at the bars on Friday and Saturday, spend their weekdays.
‡The location of the Psychology building seems to be an anomaly, surrounded by both Nerd-Limbo and Nerd-Land.

Places I only go to drink beer:  A couple times a week I migrate from my familiar world to another familiar world (think Oregon Trail, except no one has ever died of dysentery out at the bars).  Unfortunately, since I live on Lathrop St. (lower left corner of the above map), traveling from my classes and/or house requires navigating through unfamiliar territory, which is commonly avoided via taking cabs.

Coastie-Island:  Also known as “frat row,” Langdon Street is as unfamiliar to me as the internet is to my Grandma.  Hundreds of girls wearing gaucho pants, ugg boots, north faces, and huge sunglasses (regardless of the weather or current sun intensity) and guys with fohawks, popped collars, and probably tribal armband tattoos dwell in this region.§♦
§Coastie Island slightly overlaps with the Places I only go to drink beer only because of the less than ideal location of the State Sider Apartments.
♦The recently constructed Lucky Apartments, located in between Liberal Arts-Ville and Places I only go to drink beer is an unfortunate contradiction of my Socio-Academic Theory.

Disclaimer:  This post is merely satire.  There are clearly exceptions to the immense stereotypes that I cast here. I realize that very hard working and motivated people exist in all academic areas of campus.

The worst movie in the history of the world

My roommate recently mentioned that he believed Nicolas Cage to be the worst actor in Hollywood.  I do loathe both National Treasures, Ghost Rider (lowered my IQ), Gone in 60 Seconds (further fueled my hatred of any movie involving a combination of the words “fast” and/or “furious”), and “Knowing” looks worse than listening to an entire Nickelback album (on the plus side though, he’s currently filming The Sorcerers’ Apprentice, which I can only hope stars Mickey Mouse).  However, in my opinion it doesn’t get much worse than Keanu Reeves – The Matrix is only the beginning of his turd mountains.  One must also consider Hardball (”I’m blown away by your ability to show up…” – ?), Speed, and who could forget the debacle that was Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures.  Add Tom Cruise, Forbes magazine’s world’s most powerful celebrity in 2006/avid Alien believer, but disbeliever of the field of psychiatry/recovering dyslexic (via Scientology), and you’ve probably got the worst movie anyone has ever seen in their entire life.  Throw all three of these guys in a museum, sinking ship, or alternate universe that exists only in computer programs, and I would say that you’ve got the formula for the least productive hour and a half of anyone’s life to date.

Coalition of the willing monkeys

I typically associate myself with the conservative side of politics, however, after watching Will Ferrell’s “You’re Welcome America” on HBO for the second time, some absolutely ridiculous portions of his stand-up comedy caused me to wonder, “can that possibly be real.”  There were hilarious quotes that Bush actually said, such as,

“Removing Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision now, and it will be the right decision ever.”
-George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 12, 2008

However, some of the things that Will Ferrell went into elaborate detail about were so ridiculous that I wondered if the statements were even closely based on fact.  Maybe I was on a hiatus from the current events pipeline when some of these things actually happened.  For example, among the 46 countries in the “Coalition of the Willing” against Iraq, was Palau (mainly known for their great scuba diving, coconuts, and tapioca), Costa Rica, Iceland, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the Solomon Islands, all of which have no military whatsoever.  This Washington Post article gives a pretty hilarious account of just how elite “the willing” were.  Will Ferrell even went on a rant about Morocco agreeing to send 2,000 land-mine-detonating monkeys, to which I thought “no F-ing way this is real.”  I was wrong. Evidently, back in 2003, United Press International reported that a newspaper in Rabat, Morocco claimed that Morocco offered to send 2,000 monkeys from the Atlas Mountains, “trained” in detonating land mines, to Iraq.  I’m not sure we took them up on this offer, but Will Ferrell sure did have some hilarious things to say about these “crazy, land-mine-detonating/child-entertaining monkeys.”  Ferrell’s act also reminded me of a Daily Show clip that stands out in my memory as one the most hilarious in the show’s history (it gets good around 4:15):

March 20, 2008: Iraq: The First 5 Years

Avoiding alarms

SleepTracker Pro

There only only two things in life that I enjoy waking up early for:

1. Waking up at 5:00 AM on a badger gameday to either drink bloody marys, or as of last year to go to UW Marching Band rehearsal.
2. Going fishing

Other than that, I’m convinced that the moment my alarm goes off each morning is pretty much the worst moment of my day.  I don’t hate what I do during the day, I just value sleep, and I’ve been sleeping unusually poorly lately.  Therefore, when my friend Mattsen showed me his new toy, a watch that monitors your sleep patterns and wakes you up at the least intrusive moment of your sleep cycles, I was very intrigued.  I remember from some psychology classes that this probably means waking up up right after Rapid Eye Movement (REM)/dreaming sleep and you can set up to a 90 minute wake-up window which will wake you up as close the end of REM cycle as possible.  The watch is called  the SleepTracker Pro Sleep Monitoring Watch (~$163) and in addition to tracking your sleep patterns and waking you up at an ideal time so that you feel more refreshed, it also connects to your computer so that you can track your sleep patterns over time and look for lifestyle influences which improve your sleep (something which I’m sure Wando’s Bacon Night doesn’t coincide with).  There is also a cheaper, ~$91, model that may be slightly more in my budget.  I’m not sure I’d really use the software, but maybe if I get some cash together, I won’t be hitting the 5 minute snooze on my cell phone for 20 minutes each morning.

Jokes on you, America!

Could have really used some color photography back then...

When we received Lady Liberty from the French in 1886 to represent our “friendship established during the American Revolution,” it was a great international gesture… sort of.  It dawned on me recently, however, that from about 1886-1906 it was a beautiful bronze color until it turned to its (arguably) unattractive shade of green.  So, was france really thinking we’ll give this ticking attrocity to the US and in about 20 years they’ll really feel stupid?  Maybe we should have seen our current poor relations with the french coming.  I’m going to go eat some freedom fries…

Take that iTunes!

I’m not an Apple fan.  I’ve never liked their GUI (possibly because I’ve heard it’s more addicting than Marshall Applewhite was to the Heaven’s Gate Cult) and would much rather stumble along with Microsoft Vista.  There really is no way around using iTunes, however.  Not only do I own an ipod, but it’s just cleaner and has higher usability than any other music software (I haven’t used winamp since middle school, even though it does whip the llama’s ass).  However, until recently, I have had two major gripes with iTunes (in addition to my hatred of their company).

1. There is no easy, free, way to copy your music back from your ipod to your computer.  They did away with this functionality years ago.
2. Those damn exclamation points!  Short of going through your entire library and deleting songs one by one, iTunes has no way to delete files after their location can’t be found.  You can’t even sort files by the exclamation point icon.

However, tonight after searching for a long time (and accidently downloading quite a bit of spyware), I found two great solutions to these problems.

Solution 1:  It is possible to copy files from your ipod by browsing through the hidden files, however, Apple’s music organization system makes this really hard to navigate.  The best free software I found to organize these files was iDump (don’t be fooled by the google ad at the top of the page, just click on “External Mirror 1″ or “External Mirror 2″).

Solution 2:  Check out iTunes Library Updater.  The “ITLU (GUI)” program is very easy to use.  I use it to delete all of my files with locations that can’t be found (those damn exclamation points) by clicking this option on the right.  You can also use it to sync and manage your entire library with the location of your music if you want.  As a tip, the program didn’t work if iTunes was already open, so close it first.

This post is much nerdier than usual, but I was glad to find these two programs.